I Found the "Love of My Life" at age 60

I
never thought I’d be sixty years old before I would find “the love of my life”.
My only goal growing up in Rutland,
Vermont was to find my “one and
only”, marry and have children. I
thought women who wanted a career were like “nuns”; they had “a calling”. I
planned a wedding for each season; my winter version featured a velvet gown
with leg- of- mutton sleeves and lute players. I named my unborn children.

Of
course, I loved acting. I professed to want to be a movie star. In high school
I acted in plays, and won speech and oratorical contests.

I had planned to go to secretarial school.
That changed when I won the New England drama
auditions my junior year of high school. The prize was a scholarship to an
acting school. My drama coach cautioned my parents that I should go to college
and major in theatre; that way I would have something to “fall back on”. I
didn’t intend to “fall back”; I intended to get married. My parents reasoned
that I would have a better choice of men in college. I did have choices: young
men from Boston University, MIT and Harvard. I dated a
lot. I often felt like someone making her way through a library looking for
that one perfect book.

I
thought I had found my “one true love” the year after graduation. I had ordered
my gown, the invitations and the reception hall. Two months before the wedding,
he asked me to return the ring. The devastation lasted for years. In the
meantime, I married. My husband and I were very fond of each other; we had
three sons, and my husband began his climb of the corporate ladder. In 1972,
feeling the weight of a wife, children and a mortgage, he left. On a final
family trip, I survived emotionally by imagining my second husband. Shortly
after the divorce, my former husband became ill. There was little or no child
support. I needed to work, so I taught high school English. But I discovered
two traits I hadn’t known I possessed: ambition and competitiveness. I left my
teaching job and began hosting and producing a talk show for the local cable
company; my pay was free cable. However, my career path was set. What lay ahead
was a surprise even to me. I hosted Orlando’s
first talk show. When the station folded, I moved to radio news and talk radio.
In 1976, I moved to TV news. In January of 1978 I became the first woman in Central Florida to anchor an evening newscast, I had
shattered a glass ceiling. Research showed more people recognized me than the
governor.My career took me to both the East and West Coasts;
I hosted and produced TV and radio talk shows and taught media classes for
three colleges.

I met many men. A brief marriage in the
80’s made the front page of the local newspaper,t
was when I returned from Seattle after a six-year stint teaching college
classes and hosting radio talk that I met the man who would become” the love of
my life”. I rented a condo in a suburb of Orlando. On the second day when attempting to change
the toilet paper, in frustration I pulled the holder and plaster out of the
wall. I called maintenance. When I answered the door a tall, handsome man with
white hair and blue eyes stood before me. He said his name was Floyd, but his
friends called him Sonny. After he
re-plastered the holder, we talked briefly. “What do people do in this town to
have fun?” I asked. Looking back, I had opened more than one door.

“How
would you like me to show you parts of Central Florida
you have never seen before?” he asked. “And I’ll cook you the best dinner you
ever had, country fried steak and a strawberry Danish. On a cool Florida evening, I
climbed on the back of his Honda Gold Wing, and we drove to the beach. We sat
on stools in a bar overlooking the ocean. We talked as night fell and
white-capped waves slapped the beach. His mother had raised him in rural Penn
after his father died in WW II. An uncle who owned an adjoining farm taught him
farming. He had worked with his hands all his life. For a short time he had
been superintendent of a foundry and had driven stocks cars competitively since
he was a teenager. Our paths could not have been more different. No dating
service would have matched us, but from then on we have been together. There
were raised eyebrows from his friends and mine. “Him?” “Her?” However, I knew I
had found ”the love of my life”.

I traded my heels
for boots, my cocktail dresses for jeans. We went on “bike runs”, drank beer
from the bottle in biker bars and danced to country music. Sonny’s family lived nearby, so our social life
became mainly family barbecues, holiday get- togethers and birthday parties,
When we married, we drove the motorcycle to a small town courthouse to exchange
vows; later, we ate lunch at a local diner .We bought a fixer-up house which Sonny re-modeled.

In ten years there have been changes. Sonny converted his Gold Wing
into a tryke. Neither
of us can handle heavy food, so I bake high fiber bread and Sonny grills
chicken and lean hamburgers. Sonny battles diabetes; I battle
fibromyalgia. The
recession has hit us, so I teach nighttime college classes; Sonny puts
in eight-hour days as a handyman.
Vacations are limited to visiting my three sons and their families.
Entertainment is usually eating popcorn and watching a movie in bed.
Friday
nights we play Bingo at the Moose lodge. Our family, two cats and two
dogs,
sleep with us every night. I am 70 years old and I love my life!

Growing up, I would
not have believed I would live six decades before finding “the love of my
life”, I forgot our anniversary this year, but that morning I awoke to find a
big bouquet, a card and a cup of coffee. The card Sonny
had carefully chosen read: “I treasure every day I spend with you. You are
truly ‘the love of my life’ ”. It has been worth the wait!

Comments

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Author

Svea 4 years agofrom Florida

The thing to remember is let go of expectations of what you think your soulmate will be. Match.com would never have put us together but we compliment each other. I taught college; he was a blue collar guy who has his own handyman business. He reads Playboy; I read the NY Times. If you are a professional give those blue collar guys a chance. In many cases they will treat a woman better than the well educated guy.

Author

Svea 4 years agofrom Florida

I honestly am not sure as much as he is the love of my life it this relationship would have worked twenty years ago. I was in the spotlght in my TV career and he as an executive and race car driver.

teresa 6 years ago

You give me hope when I thought there was none. Thank you.

kartika damon 6 years ago

beautiful!

PaperNotes 6 years ago

Oh! Thanks for sharing your story! Love knows no age and no time indeed! Best wishes!